Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

In order to limit discrimination, bribery and foul play, every diocese had been allocated a quota of pilgrims. Chances were good for the rich from poor parishes, because most peasant farmers and civil servants could not pay for the journey and didn’t bother to register. Serenity registered himself, and his chances were good. Padlock wanted to go too, but her efforts ran into trouble because one had to register in one’s parish of birth, and only one person per family could register in each parish: Mbale, her younger brother, had already registered in theirs. Her situation was further complicated by the fact that even if she managed to secure a place, there was no way Serenity could finance her journey as well as his own without filing for bankruptcy.

Padlock dreamed of being the first person in her family to kiss the hand of the pope, to be pictured with the Holy Father, to step on Holy Land, and to touch and taste and feel the soil Father Abraham, Joseph, Mother Mary and Jesus Christ had walked on. She wanted to be the first in her family to breathe the air that had carried inspiration to the authors of the Holy Book, but once again Mbale seemed about to sabotage her plans and poison her dreams.

Padlock’s mood swings came back with a vicious bite. She brooded and filled the house with the stench of her depression. She felt like a bobbin trapped inside its slot, unable to get out unless somebody decided to remove it. She had attacks of hyperventilation. She feared she was about to burst or explode. She remembered the bitter prayers and fasting she had offered at Mbale’s home soon after being regurgitated from the convent. She wanted to fling herself on the cold floor and claw it with her fingers till the nails bled. She could not now go into voluntary solitary confinement and offer novenas, because she had a family to lead. She put her arms on her chest and entrusted her burdens to God. In the meantime, she hammered the shitters with guava switches whenever they transgressed, and put Serenity on emotional tenterhooks.

Serenity was pinned firmly by the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he wanted to give the mother of his children a chance, because he knew how much it meant to her. On the other hand, he wanted to surprise his wife’s aunt with a gift all her former lovers could not: he wanted to fly her to Rome and Jerusalem and tattoo his name forever in her heart. Serenity had insomnia attacks. He tossed and turned in bed. He listened to the sounds of the night and became infuriated that dogs howled so much when mating. He felt disgusted with his financial impotence and his inability to please both his wife and her aunt. He got out of bed and consulted his library. He revisited Godot and other characters, wondering what they would have done in his predicament. He got angry that Muhammad Ali could have so much money, when he, a loyal fan, was writhing on the torture rack of poverty, unable to exploit incoming chances. Serenity was wrapped in his reveries for weeks, sauntering through life with dreams cooing on one side and reality heckling on the other.

Serenity’s sisters, Tiida and Nakatu, had in the meantime kicked up a storm of controversy in the village. Largely uninterested in Catholicism, they had no ambitions for themselves; but in a bid to turn the tables on all families in the village, especially the formidable Stefanos, they had decided that Grandpa should go to Rome. Both women’s Muslim husbands had promised to contribute to the pilgrimage fund, and so had Uncle Kawayida, who was doing very well in business. Grandpa’s chances of securing a place were good, for the local people were generally poor and places were left over after the initial registration heat had died down.

Tiida and Dr. Ssali had won their battle with the Conversion Committee about a year earlier. They had been awarded an oily-white Peugeot, which was washed daily and looked after like the sole remnant of an endangered species. Tiida enjoyed being chauffeured to important meetings in the car because it was new and elegant, and also because the leathery smell of its cool gray upholstery imbued her with the heady feeling that she was as tough as leather. One day her husband drove her to Serenity’s home during his lunch break. She stepped out of the car full of the leather smell, feeling that her opposition had virtually no chance. Her mission was to pressure Serenity into contributing to Grandpa’s pilgrimage fund. She could have met him at the office, but she had decided that her larger-than-life presence in the pagoda would be the best way to clinch a resounding victory.

As Tiida surveyed the pagoda, with the chaotic events of the Indian exodus bubbling at the back of her mind, she felt proud that her family had done well. Here was Serenity, or Mpanama, as she fondly remembered him in his short-trousered, tall-women-accosting days, in a house built by Indians which was indeed a far cry from the obscurity of his bachelor cottage. Here he was in the middle of the city, abreast with new developments and furthering his ambitions. The postal union move had been a very brilliant maneuver, she conceded. At one time when they were growing up, she had worried that Serenity was too sleepy to come to much in life. She had feared that he would end up poor, with patches in his trousers and debts up to his neck, simply because he didn’t seem smart enough to put winning moves together; but now, after all those years and all the changes in the fortunes of the family, she felt that they were better off than the Stefanos. Here were father and son about to go to Rome, and Kawayida and she both owning vehicles, and Serenity involved in the leadership of the Postal Workers’ Union. The Stefanos were now a family of the past. Old man Stefano was battling the ravages of a stroke that had left him paralyzed on one side. The star of the scions of the Stefano family had stopped rising.

Aunt Tiida knew that Serenity did not espouse this kind of family rivalry, but she was ready to work on him, to stir guilt in his heart and make it clear that he owed his father this last favor as a show of gratitude for all he had done for him. She would remind him of the land Grandpa had donated for him to built his bachelor cottage, and the role the old man had played in organizing his wedding. She felt that she had Mpanama in her grip. She had left nothing to chance. It was the reason she had come to neutralize his wife and pin her down in her pagoda. This village girl, whose parents were saved from the terrors of a rotten roof by her brother, could not defeat Tiida. She was ready to put Padlock in her place — at the bottom of the pile, where she belonged.

Like most people who have just acquired new status symbols, Tiida believed that the brand-new Peugeot had given her a sharper edge in relation to everybody else, and it was true that the village girl her brother had married had nothing in her possession with which to counter the glitter of the French-made machine. It looked very unlikely that Serenity would ever buy himself a new car. Not with so many children, not with so much responsibility. All this made Tiida feel high up in the air.

What she did not know was that Padlock had not changed over the years. She still was indifferent to material goods, she still felt utter contempt for shamefully acquired possessions, and anybody who exchanged his foreskin and his religion for some spray-painted piece of metal was utterly despicable in her eyes. In her scheme of things, the Peugeot had been acquired from the Devil, by devilish means, and its owners deserved no respect and would never get any from her, least of all in her own house.

Padlock greeted Tiida with insulting politeness, as though she were a lunatic to be handled with great care. She played the cowed village girl in the presence of visiting royalty. She blocked avenues of conversation with terse, very polite replies. She retreated to her bridal tactics of unapproachable gentility, which left Tiida stranded and looking for ways of lifting the blockade. Tiida was not intimidated — she rarely was — but she felt embattled, confused, unable to operate in these icy conditions. There was a kink in her cable which blocked the flow of her power, her charisma, her ability to stun. This was not the kind of woman who normally fazed her. On the contrary, it was only richer women, more elegant ladies or younger sophisticated girls who made her heart pump, and even then she fought back. The strange thing was that she suddenly felt as if she had done something wrong in the past for which she was paying now, but in her living memory she felt she had never double-crossed her brother’s wife. In fact, she was one of the few people in the family who ever defended Padlock, usually pointing to her fecundity.